ROHAN, PETER DE, Chevalier de Gié, and marshal of France, better known by the name of Marshal de Gié, was the son of Louis de Rohan, the first of the name, lord of Guémené and Montauban, and descended of one of the most ancient and most illustrious families of the kingdom. The family of Rohan, before the Revolution, held the rank of prince in France in consequence of deriving its origin from the first sovereigns of Brittany, and clearly admitted by the dukes of Brittany themselves in the states general of that province held in 1088. The house of Rohan had still another advantage, which was common to it with very few families, even the most distinguished among the princes, namely, that instead of having been aggrandised by the wealth procured from alliances, it had held in itself for seven centuries the largest possessions of any family in the kingdom.
One of the most distinguished branches of this family was Peter, the subject of the present article. Louis XI. rewarded his bravery with the staff of marshal of France in 1475. He was one of the four lords who governed the kingdom during the indisposition of that prince at Chinon in 1484. Two years afterwards he opposed the
attacks of the archduke of Austria upon Picardy. He commanded the van-guard at the battle of Fornoue in 1495, and signalized himself much in that engagement. His bravery procured him the countenance and confidence of Louis XII. who appointed him his prime counsellor, and general of the army in Italy; but these advantages he lost, by incurring the displeasure of Anne of Brittany the queen.
The marshal had stopped some of her equipage on the road to Nantz; for which that vindictive prince prevailed on her husband to enter into a process against him before the parliament of Toulouse, at that time the most rigorous and severe in the kingdom. He was on the 15th of February 1506 found guilty, banished from the court, and deprived of the privileges and emoluments of his office for five years. The expence of this prosecution amounted to more than 31,000 livres, and it did no honour either to the king or the queen. If indeed it be true, that the queen was never so much delighted as with the humiliation of her enemies, she had good reason to be satisfied here. John of Authon, who hath entered into a pretty full detail of this affair, reports that Gié, being removed to the Chateau de Dreux, became an object of ridicule to the witnesses who had sworn against him. He wore a long white beard, and, quite full of the thoughts of his disgrace, took it on one occasion in his hands and covered his face with it. An ape, belonging to Alain d'Albret, count of Dreux, jumped from a bed where his master was reposing himself, and attacked the beard of Gié, who, with some difficulty, extricated himself. This scene not only occasioned much laughter to the whole company who were present, but likewise became instantly the subject of the farces and mummeries which were then acting in France. Even the school-boys made a representation of it, where, alluding to the name of the queen, they said, that there was a marshal who wished to shoe an ass (un âne), but that he received such a blow with the foot, as threw him over the wall into the garden. Marechal de Gié died at Paris, the 22d April 1513, perfectly disgusted with courts and grandeur.